Although the 2013 census wasn’t available when she interviewed her sources, Gold said the latest numbers show little change in minority employment in the news industry this year.

Her article presented findings from the 2012 ASNE census, which reported minority employment at daily newspapers dropped 5.7 percent compared to general newsroom employment, which was down 2.4 percent. The 2013 census shows minorities make up 12.37 percent of employees at daily newspapers compared to 12.32 percent in 2012.

The percentage of minority employment has stayed consistently between 12 to 14 percent in the last decade. “It’s not an enormous downward trend,” said Gold, who I graduated with at Stanford. “But the point is, it’s supposed to have gone up. When numbers don’t move, it’s either stagnation or regression relative to minorities in the U.S. population.”

Layoffs and buyouts partly explain the downward trend in diversity. But just as important are the loss of diversity leaders and the disproportionate lack of minorities in senior positions.

“’Last in, first out’ — that was the most common answer I heard,” Gold said. “As diversity efforts have been rolling out progressively, especially through the ’90s,” minorities tend to be “less senior. They have less job protection.”

Keith Woods, vice president for diversity in news and operations at NPR and former dean of faculty at Poynter, suggested to Gold that shrinking budgets have reduced the number of diversity leaders in management. “Senior people are expensive. So a lot of them take buyouts,” Gold added. “They were offered a pretty decent chunk of change and knew that their jobs were very vulnerable.”

Many of these leaders were in charge of diversity programs. Without them, there is “less diversity advocacy around issues of training, media partnerships and community coverage,” said Benet Wilson, chair of the National Association of Black Journalists digital task force, whom Gold interviewed for her article.

Bob Papper, who runs a study on diversity at the Radio and Television Digital News Association, told Gold that to appeal to their audience, television stations need to “look like” their audience.

“If you don’t have people who can speak Spanish, you’re going to have a hard time covering events, issues and people who speak that language,” Gold said.

But the pressure news organizations face just to stay afloat, Gold admitted, could explain the lack of movement. “Especially if you’re in a smaller town, this is something one of my resources mentioned, it can be very hard to find a diverse applicant if the actual community that you’re covering isn’t that diverse.”

Diversity organizations such as the Freedom Forum“are creating a large database of minority journalists” that contain their locations, specialties and qualifications to serve as a resource for newsrooms looking to diversify their staff, Gold said.

It’s a step forward, but she is unsure how much impact it will have. “Do we look at political diversity and diversity of opinion?” she asked. “It’s important not just to reduce it to a question of race or gender but making sure that newsrooms really reflect diverse experiences.”